First Sessions With The Les Paul

Okay. Les Pauls are a touch zaftig.

All electric guitars are heavy, but Les Pauls are the king of heavy. There's a Rhett Schul video about buying a Les Paul, and he weighed the ones he was trying out. 3.8 kg. I paused the video and weighed mine on the bathroom scales. 4.1 kg, just over nine pounds. I weighed my acoustic for comparison, 1.2 kg.

At first it kept sliding to the right from my knee. Was this a bad guitar? Was I doing something wrong? Did I need to wear a strap? All the cool guys in the videos had their LPs resting naturally on their right leg with nothing holding it. Maybe I wasn’t cool enough to do this?

Then I picked up the acoustic, and was reminded it was neck-heavy, so my left arm held it up slightly. Muscle memory that transferred itself to the Les Paul. Which is body-heavy and so kept sliding off, because I was lifting the neck. So I made myself hold the neck down and it stayed on my lap. That took a few hours to become natural. Playing a musical instrument is a lot about getting the physical relationship to it so it becomes a part of you.

Here's something else no-one will talk about.

Electric guitars do not sound great out of the box.

Unless you know what you're doing, which as a first-time buyer, I didn't.

Out of the box, electric guitars sound pretty... meh. When I was choosing in the shop, I was choosing between one meh and another. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Now began the real learning curve with electric guitars.

The Search for Tone. Learning how to play the amplifier and pedals.